After our morning coffee, Carol and I and Harper said our good byes to Tombstone...we had our fill of cowboys, Wyatt Earp in particular. I still haven't figured out if he was a good guy or a baddy. It all comes down to those who wrote the stories. So it goes. We pulled out of the Stampede RV park and headed south toward Bisbee, another one of those old mining towns. Tombstone has silver and Bisbee had copper.
The collection Karl, Pedro and Rosita
We made it one block from the campground. Carol spotted a cactus store, I had to drive around the block to find a proper place to park so she could shop. We are now proud parents of two new cacti, Pedro and Rosita. Carol claims that they are the 'kids of Carl’ - the cactus she got back in Marfa, Texas. I am skeptical, but now we have a happy if spiney little garden of cacti traveling with us.
Bisbee, what a nice town
On to Bisbee. We arrived just as Bisbee was waking up on a Sunday morning. What a charming little town, all old and nestled into the hill sides and brightly painted. We were told that in the 70's when the copper ran out, the Hippies moved in and made it an arts community… we liked that. We walked up and down the hillsides, shopped and I even did a little magic show for a street vendor.
We love driving out here, in the west, in the desert
We got some refreshments and charted a different route toward our destination of Picacho Peak State Park. It was an amazing ride through a geography so very different from New England. Along the route we began to see saguaro cactus for the first time. Now this really feels like the Wild West!
Thankfully they are a bit too large for Carol to bring home, however I will keep an eye on her.
Our site at Picacho Peak State Park, AZ
We pulled into the park late in the afternoon, sat in the shade and had refreshments. We each won game of cribbage and watched the sun set, being watched over the whole time by a forest of saguaro. Our site for the night was at the base of Picacho Peak and our site was high enough to overlook the valley...pretty spectacular.
Playing cribbage at sunset
We got up this morning early, starting our day with a couple of cups of the dark brew we like so much and headed for the trailhead. We hiked up the trail to the best view of the valley you can imagine and the sun was just up a bit, it was spectacular and all the cactus around us mad it all seem so surreal. What a wonderful way to start the morning.
Sunrise in the desert
A view from the crest
Happy Hikers!
Once under way, we really weren't sure of a destination. My friend Christopher recommended Scottsdale, so we went there. Scottsdale has a great 'Old Town' with a variety of shops and galleries and food... we had a pastry and more coffee, well chai and green tea... After shopping and looking for a while we found a local park. We parked the doodle by the shore of a small lake and made some lunch, sitting in our air conditioning..it was 104 degrees outside! During lunch we searched for a site for the night and found a Harvest Host site about an hour north of Phoenix and headed that way.
A mission in Scottsdale
What we found wasn't very appealing, so while we were sitting in a parking lot, we consulted our apps. We then found a state park at Lake Pleasant about 35 miles away. This place is a perfect place to end this day.
The view from our campsite
It is awesome. We are perched high on a hill overlooking a very large lake. We just came in from playing cards and watching the sunset. I shot a couple more time lapses (I have no idea when I will find time to assemble them) This park was quite a find, I had no idea that Arizona had such a gem.
Here is a gallery from the past couple of days.
